Not that I am either a Corbynite, Corbynista or a huge fan I’ll try and answer.
Yes, it is possible but it depends on how you define Socialism obviously, but I for example see no argument (other then the usual right wing nonsense about inefficiency and the wonder of the market) as to why we can’t today have a government and economic model that we saw under the Attlee government after 1945 and was more or less maintained until Thatcher. At a high level thats tackling the evils identified under the Bevridge report - free healthcare, education, housing, employment along with progressive taxation and state ownership of monopolies none of which isn’t deliverable if not already being delivered either here or abroad to differing degrees.
Thanks for answering (and apologies for late reply).
I'm not so interested in 'the right definition' of socialism, as probably you aren't either. There are many different types of socialism, which go the whole gamut from parliamentary and democratic (traditionally espoused in this country by the Labour party) to authoritarian (the current model in Venezuela) and totalitarian (once very popular in Russia and China). Personally I'd rather live in a capitalist society which respected human rights than a socialist one that didn't - as I think anyone, who's being honest, would do.
But I am interested in what you say about how the Attlee version of socialism being still a possibility if we leave the EU and practice 'socialism in one country'. I suspect that Corbynites would have this model in mind too - which I think is ironic since Corbyn - and Benn and the Socialist Campaign Group etc - always saw the Attlee government as a failure, since it was 'Atlanticist' and tied Britain to NATO, the World Bank, the IMF and the whole Bretton Woods post-war economic structure. Perhaps, secretly, Corbyn still has contempt for the 1945-51 Labour government. I think he probably does. But I don't know for sure.
That aside, is the Attlee model of socialism still viable in today's globalised economy? Could it be effectively implemented after Brexit?
You think it could. I have severe doubts. One reason, which some socialists seem reluctant to face, is the decline of the industrial working class. In '45 the workers - in manufacturing, extraction (mainly coal) and transport comprised the great bulk of the nation. Their trade unions had immense power, especially in a time of full employment. Nationalising the coal industry was common sense in '47, for many reasons. We had almost a million coal-miners remember, which is approximately a million more than we have now. Steel was also a major British industry with a powerful trade union calling the shots and no cheap foreign competition even on the horizon. Today, coal doesn't even figure in the British economy and steel is a shadow of what it once was. No one is calling for the nationalisation of either industry, and it wouldn't make much of an impact if they did. The Attlee model doesn't apply.
But even more damaging than the absence of a massive organised working class to sustain an Attlee-type government in 2018 is the complete break-up of the whole Bretton Woods system. This was a world of capital controls, exchange controls, non-convertibility of currency (for a while), and sharp political limits on international capital flows. It was a world where banks were either British banks, or French banks, or American banks and 'international banks', as such, didn't really exist. It was a world of fixed exchange rates and a world where it was much harder to salt money away in international tax havens. Private businesses simply couldn't threaten Attlee with 'moving abroad' as they can now. For obvious reasons they couldn't relocate their factories in Poland or Hungary, as Cadburys did recently. Nor could they do it in Germany or France. Workers didn't mind about exchange controls because none of them, in '45, was thinking of taking a holiday in Spain or Portugal. Blackpool was still the place to be and you could spend pound notes there.
Finally Attlee's achievements - which were massive and considerable and for which we should all, still, be immensely grateful, were built on the back of rationing. To buy bread you needed a coupon. Lots of other foods and textiles and shoes were also rationed. And this continued right through the six years of post-war Labour government. The educated working class (where's that now?) supported this because they knew that Britain was trying not to spend dollars and was deliberately cutting down on consumption goods (including Hollywood films) in order to spend money re-equipping industry, building homes, building hospitals, building power stations, modernising the railways.
These people had come through the biggest war in history. That's why they - or at least most of them - agreed to support the continuation of a 'siege economy' while Labour constructed the modern welfare state. Would they now? Of course not. Lexiteers who argue that the British people would go through all that again to build 'socialism in one country' are crazy.
This is the real tragedy of Brexit. What a modern democratic socialist party should be doing is thinking internationally. It should be embracing (and democratising) institutions like the EU and winning he argument for social equality, protection of labour and environmental planning
there. This is where the world is at the moment, and will be for the foreseeable future. International capital needs to be taken on internationally. Instead of which we have Corbyn calling it a 'capitalist club', giving up the fight to democratise it, and turning back to the nation-state, while fetishising the decision made during the Referendum by the most ignorant, unorganised and uneducated working class we've had since before Chartism.
There are no nation-state solutions to global capitalist power. Corbyn hasn't got a fucking clue about this because he still thinks in terms of a 1970s Bennite model of autarky. Even in the 1970s it was stupid. If, somehow, Labour wins the next general election (a possibility, I suppose, because the Tories are in an incredible mess), it will probably end the Labour party forever. The 'Venezuela solution', which Jezza still apparently subscribes to, will lead to a complete collapse of the economy - way beyond anything the Tories could manage. Trada, start building up your stocks of tinned food now.
